Providence - MIH - 1/20/12

BU vs. Providence Men’s Ice Hockey, 1/20/12 - Agganis Arena, Boston, MA

Bottom Line: BU beats Providence 6-1

The Memories: Terriers get a 4 goal period for the first time in a long time / Millan blocks 36 of 37, giving up a single goal that was, yet again, a collegiate first / Students, students, students. Everywhere


I'm actually going to split up the two game weekend for a first time in a long time. It's because I'm probably going to have different, but hopefully great, things to say about both games.

I am proud to say that for the first time since I've started writing this blog, I actually feel like the crowd in Agganis was doing its job. I know I'll probably get some haters for this, but hey, we don't have the best atmosphere in our home arena. Which is ridiculous because it's the same kids that go to the away games and just dominate those home crowds. But some students (not all) have a tendency to just get bored. If I can EVER hear the players yelling to each other, it's just way too quiet and frankly embarrassing.

If I had to say what makes an atmosphere intimidating, I'd break it down into three things - volume, resilience, and creativity.

Which leads me to Friday night.

The volume, oh, it was there. First things first, sitting in 118 you sometimes have a hard time picking up on what the 108 is saying aside from the traditional cheers (to which I assume the 108 could say the same about us). But I could hear them. From start to finish I could hear them. When you break it down section by section, I still can't complain. There usually comes a point in games when there's only one guy starting cheers and there's only 50 kids joining in. That point never came last night. Cheers were starting to the left of me, in front of me, and hell even behind me. And when one cheer started, I could hear it all around me. Oh, and we did the sieve/back-up sieve chant. Couldn't tell you why, but aside from school-specific ones, that is my hands down favorite. There were also times when we were trying to win battles down low. Rather than sitting there and gasping, ooo-ing, awe-ing, and what not, some kids started chants. I whole heartedly approve that method. If you're as anxious as the guys on the ice, don't let that affect the atmosphere. Those of us in the stands have the ability to harness that, spin it around, and absolutely dominate the noise. Which in turn gets into the players' heads, Terriers or not, and can affect the outcome.

Secondly - resilience. No, that wasn't the best second period from the Terriers by any means. Especially coming after a huge first period, it'd be easy to get lazy and quiet. But that didn't happen. I'm sure if you compared the quantity of cheers in the second versus the first and the third, it would be a lot less. But I can't really say the quality was any worse. Still loud, still full, still going.

Third is creativity. This is probably the only aspect where I could I knock us at this point, and it's not by much. Of course, creativity is harder to come by in a home atmosphere when no opposing team fans show up. That is unbelievably easy to feed off of. I get that, I know on Friday night we couldn't be battling ourselves. But the one thing that bothered me - the post goal cheers. No, not chanting names, but the songs. Both Sahir Gill and Matt Nieto scored last night. For real, do you guys read the Dirty Laundry List? The Dog Pound facebook group? I think I heard approximately 5 people do the Sahir Gill song and 15 doing the Matt Nieto one. That stuff is great. It's so much better than getting complacent with just chanting their names. But it only works if we all do it. Instead it sounded like the 5 of us got drunk and forgot the words to if you're happy and you know it.

But overall, wow. We might not only be number 1 in Hockey East, but I think the fans are making their way up the rankings, too. In some fictional arena atmosphere poll in my head, not the NESN poll we are currently in the process of rigging (bravo, boys and girls). I have to admit, I'm starting to think we can do it. If the Terriers manage to pull off home-ice advantage in HE, they might have more benefits than just the ice.

Look - these kids, Parker, the whole school administration basically has been ranting and raving about us recently. And I dare someone to try and tell me that the fan support hasn't helped drag us from the bottom up. I think there's a reason that we can't really put our finger on our top guy right now. Chiasson's leading in points, but Noonan - what the hell where did all this offense come from, and Santana just played leap frog with a goal-eeerr, sieve in his 4th game back. Wade Megan's still doing the greasiest of work, ChrisCo's getting it going finally, and Clendening is becoming an assist machine. We, the fans, we're making this fun for everybody. We're getting in everyone's heads, lately we're getting on everyone's TVs, and we sure as hell are coming soon to a Hockey East arena near you. But not without laughing, chanting, and cheering opponents out of Agganis first.

Thanks for coming, but our house, well god damnit I think it's finally our house.